A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The most popular seem to be lighthearted clever little truths, hidden in daily life.
Here are some examples to inspire your own showerthoughts:
If you made it this far, showerthoughts is accepting new mods. This community is generally tame so its not a lot of work, but having a few more mods would help reports get addressed a little sooner.
Whats it like to be a mod? Reports just show up as messages in your Lemmy inbox, and if a different mod has already addressed the report, the message goes away and you never worry about it.
Then the plebs reach for the scythes and the machetes.
That's why the billionaires steal as much money as they can, but stop short of making a critical mass of people desperately poor: they keep most people poor enough that they try to fight for what little they have left, and between themselves for the scraps, instead of uniting and rising up against the kleptocrats who engineer their poverty.
We're slowly getting to the point where they're get too greedy and moving past that critical mass point. I think Trumps presidency really turbo charged the idiocy.
A lot of rich fucks are starting to feel the danger though:
The billionaires are so out of touch that they have no idea how desperate the masses are becoming.
That's the subject of the chapter on the anarchist FAQ I was reading last week. Goes something like this: governments exist to serve the billionaires. When governments do something meaningful to other people it is a tug of war to reach a compromise, always with the goal of preserving the status quo.
"All the money" assumes there's a finite amount of money. There isn't. In a fiat currency, like the Dollar, Euro or Sterling, banks create money when they lend, and the money disappears again when the loan is repaid. This is what a banking license gives you; The ability to make loans without having the existing money to back them.
Government spends by telling it's bank (The Federal Reserve, ECB or BoE) to lend money for the things it wants to buy. Taxes then repay that debt and the money doesn't exist anymore.
In an economy where huge amounts of wealth is horded, there's a problem of liquidity. All of that wealth is idle. It's not circulating and there becomes a danger of economic collapse. Therefore more money has to enter the system, either through government spending or commercial banks making loans.
Horded money is also money that isn't going back to banks to repay the lending. So the amount of money in existence goes up, driving the value of that money down. This is inflation. One dollar can no longer buy as much as it used to as it's value has gone down.
So, billionaires cause:
Sound familiar?
Now a government could choose to raise its spending so that it injects the required money into its economy, rather commercial banks doing it. The advantage of that is that they can balance that with raised taxes, so inflation doesn't get out of control. They can also choose who to tax and protect areas of the economy.
Most governments don't see it this way, arguing that they can only spend what they take in taxes (The "government spending is like a household budget" argument). This has been false ever since they all came off the gold standard. They can spend what they want and they can tax what they want. The difference will drive inflation, so has to be kept reasonable, but if they don't spend enough the commercial banks take over and will absolutely drive inflation.
I have read about these ideas about money being created through loans before, but also read contradictory ideas.
Since you seem to know a lot about the subject, would you happen to know of materials where I can learn more about the topic?
So these ideas are the basis of modern monetary theory (MMT) i.e. the theory of modern money, not that it's a modern theory of money. There's nothing very controversial here, in that the "theory" is just a description of how things work when you have a fiat currency. The controversial parts are what you do in your fiscal policy once you think about things this way.
Stephanie Kelton is a vocal proponent of this style of framing. She's been an economic advisor to Bernie Sanders and is the author of "The Deficit Myth" which explains these concepts. She also gave a TED talk on the concepts.
Richard Murphy is a UK proponent who writes a blog and has a YouTube channel where he explains the concepts.
There are others, but these two are a good way in. Searching for them, and also the the phrase "Modern Monetary Theory" should get you lots of talks, interviews and articles on both sides of the arguments.
That is an ongoing process, but it looks much different from what you imagine. Even now, a large part of the economy is working for the top 10 percent, producing luxury goods and services. Wealthy customers provide the biggest margins for companies.
"Regular" customers are getting more irrelevant every day. There was a time when your role as a consumer was important for the economy. This role gave you power and influence because companies were competing for your money. This era is slowly coming to an end, something most people haven't realized yet.
Rich people can be fools, and a fool and his money are soon parted. That's why much of the economy is just everyone trying to scam everyone else.
We had that before. It was called feudalism and it was terrible. One day, the people got pissed off enough to cut off a few heads. A golden age ensued for a couple hundred years.
I recommend the episode of Recess where they use monstickers as currency. In this episode, TJ finds ways to amass all the monstickers and make everyone else destitute. It occurred to me while watching the episode that all the other kids have to do is stop requiring each other to pay for stuff with monstickers, since nobody has them anymore. And then it occurred to me, why can't we do that in real life? Why can't society just collectively realize this whole money thing doesn't work if a few people are hoarding it all and just come up with a new system? Instead people are being deprived of basic needs because of this stupid imaginary system
Because the people with the money also control the physical goods, how are you going to acquire food and shelter without money? and then while you may accept small amounts of bartering you will need some amount of money to continue purchasing food and shelter
It's a tad worse than that. They also control all the debt. You can't invent a new currency and use it to pay a mortgage, car payment, student loans, credit cards, etc.
Well, at least not before it develops value that those institutions will recognize. I can't say that Bitcoin made that leap, but it can be readily exchanged for other currencies these days so maybe there's hope.
Don't forget the part where they also own the people who create the laws and therefore the people who enforce the laws.
The economy collapses and you get a revolution, mass emigration, and/or other major societal upheavals -- probably as soon as a lot of people start going hungry...
There is only 9 meals between man and revolution
It basically already did
What do you mean "if"?
This is the comment.
The majority population falls into progressively more desperate poverty. Work hours are extended for less and less personal gain and greater risk of injury, disease, and disability. Recreation, autonomy, and actualization become ever more out of reach.
Depends on how you look at it. Technically, it'll never happen. The megacorps still need employees to do some tasks. They'll still have some pocket money.
OTOH, you could say that it's already happened. The plebs are broke, the middle class is basically gone, and the tax structure can't support everything that the government wants to do. Eventually, borrowing runs out, and we get a crisis that makes the current economic troubles look mild.
I don't relish this path.
It started in 1971 and it’s still running its course. So, look around I guess. If we don’t do anything in another 20 years it won’t be possible to own a home for anybody. We will all be severely restricted on what we can eat and how we can travel. Everything you buy will be disposable garbage that makes you sick and needs replacement often.
They let us borrow some so that we can buy their products and pay them back more. We have to trade our labor to make up the difference between our passive income and current expenses, but they’ll only give us just enough to sustain a population of laborers.
Some take a risk and borrow wayyyy more than they can really pay back with their own labor and use that money to buy assets that they hope will be successful in integrating with the loop of money. If it’s successful, their assets buy the labor of others to generate income so they pay back the loan and do it all over again.
The "plebs" will develop a new currency of their own. And by this I basically mean anything from bottle caps to IOU notes etc. Monopoly money, whatever. Arguably they could use something actually valuable too but using an IOU-type thing kinda secures it against theft. Point is that it starts with small communities with some degree of trust of course. Alternatively, trade work for food and goods - but we're primed to use money so I think we're likely to just create a new currency since we already know it's simpler to just trade 5 bottle caps for a carrot than it is to wash dishes for... oh i dunno, 3 carrots or whatever.
This kinda is what we should be getting to do anyway at this point. The 1% should be regarded as a force of nature. You can't win against them anymore you can win against a volcano. Best you can do is work around them (instead of trying to beat them at their own game which they are constantly rigging in their favor anyway).
Money itself only has as much value as we give it.
this is what people mean when they talk about the contradictions of capitalism.
This is why I think they are all into crypto, because they see it as the next big currency and want to be the person controlling it
It's not in the billionaire's interest for us plebs to have no money at all. A lot of their interests are funded by us. Paying for power, food, iPhones, clothes, cars, holidays etc. So if they have it all and we have none, the economy will collapse, people will barter with vape juice and booze, and the billionaires will realize they cannot eat money.
When the economy collapses the question of who will pay taxes is a secondary problem. The primary one will be to rebuild the state and a new currency and then they'll look at the tax code.
You are presuming that the economic-configuration would be the same..
That isn't correct.
The Deep South's slaves weren't allowed any economic-autonomy, were they?
We'd be mere-property. mere-slaves, no rights, & just mowing-us-down-with-bullets if we protested, if it got far enough.
You know, the way communist dictators mow-down their own farmers/food-producers ( Stalin ), or their own intelligentsia ( Mao ), or the way fascist dictators mow-down the woke.
Most currence is mere-leverage, & with that-fake an economy, they can certainly come-up-with something that locks us out.
Trumpcoin, e.g: either you use trumpcoin XOR you're ICE'd, if you see what I mean..
If they have to manufacture criminality, in order to "justify" some more "enforcement", well, for bullies, that's called entertainment, right?
the economic-phase/paradigm we're currently-in is only 1 phase of many.
The barter-system the Indigenous peoples ( who hadn't come-up-with a currency of any kind ) works, for low-intensity economies..
the "economy" that functioned in the nazi concentration-camps ( people traded for pieces-of-paper, or cigarettes, etc ), or in prisons, is an economy..
Underground-economy's likely to be present in nearly-all economies, especially the ones rooted in class-based-validity..
( in the academic-class-system associating-with-an-important-name is a kind of "currency" )
The intent is total-segregation-of-privilege-&-power to them, from all-others.
Why should they care if the all-others part doesn't work, or isn't sustainable?
So long as it works until they die, .. they won, right?
_ /\ _
This is where AI comes in too, a new hyper repressive economy will be much easier to enforce with killer robots that do whatever you tell them without question.
What you are describing sounds an awful lot like collapse to me. Your slavery South comparison is missing that a lot of what they produced was exported to places where at least officially slavery was banned. So that model is propped up in one location by areas with purchasing power from the general public elsewhere. The thought experiment was what if everywhere was the slavery South, in which case the economy will no longer be sustainable.
money represents power and whoever has power will have the money.
i think you're looking at this from a very "everyday" perspective - you think of money as something that is passed around and goes from A to B. the system at large does not work that way. just like the earth is flat if you look at any small patch of it but is round when you look at it globally, the economy works very differently whether you look at it at an everyday scale or at a global scale.
on a global scale, things are determined by geopolitical considerations, not by whatever companies or buyers/sellers do. like, that china exports so-and-so many tons of steel and imports so-and-so many tons of pork meat has very little to do with companies working hard to produce these products. it's mostly some globalist philosophy to determine what happens on a global scale. for example, tariffs might completely change the game, if only there is the political will for that. as do free-trade agreements.
again, the same is true for any big country. "money" on a country-level is a fiction. it was invented by banks for complex reasons (mostly to simplify trade) and can be modified as long as it's meaningful to the state's politics. like, the state can just print more money through the federal reserve bank. in fact, it does that all the time. that cannot be explained by simple "trade transactions" as you're imagining them rn. there's abstract and complex and completely non-trivial maths involved in this game. "what happens when the billionaires own everything" only makes sense as a question when you consider that the concept of "owning" stuff is fundamental - which it is not. "Ownership" is a legal construct because the state deems it useful. with a different philosophy, the very concept of "ownership" might lose traction and become meaningless. The question therefore is: What is the political will at a state level?
Bold of you to assume they could think that far. To be honest, they don’t think us at all. The more people are starving to death, the better for them. I’m sure they think like “eat the poor”. This world is doomed with capitalism and we should do something about it now, before it’s too late.
Usually happens coincidentally to them being in charge. Pray you can offer value to them, is normal advice (given by the oligarchy).
on the flip side, it usually happens just before the aristocracy is strung up in the streets and flayed open to send a message.
that message?
"do not forget there are more of us than there are of you."
I would imagine at some point government will start becoming creative to tax the billionaires or the corporations. Though the masses becomes entertainment for the billionaires to keep money valuable else like you said if they all have the money then it's worthless. The government by this point would be so weak since rampant corruption would be so ingrained that any idea of taxing the billionaires would be incredibly hard to pass. So I think what likely will happen is a societal collapse. If this were to happen globally end of our current civilization.
Uhmm ... the billionaires ARE the government right now. They are engaging in fraud and crime right out in the open.
They are getting into government because they know government must stop them.
Elysium happens.
I've never seen it. Is it good?
yeah, it was actually a good movie. The big thing was that all the super rich lived in space on a halo ring while Earth went to hell for everyone else.
these days this movie hits a little too close to home for me.